98 STATE POMOLOGICAIv S0CIE;TY. 



to talking education, and they got to sort of throwing mud at 

 their State College. It wasn't a pretty thing to do, and the 

 President was smart enough to call them to order and asked 

 me to take the floor, which belonged to me. And I said I very 

 seldom dabbled in educational problems because I had a theory 

 of my own, and it didn't work with other people's theories real 

 well and so I very seldom had anything to say about it, but, I 

 says, I want to ask you one or two questions right here. How 

 many of you men have got boys in that agricultural college? 

 Not a single one of them. How many of you women will be 

 proud to see your daughter marry an agriculturist? Not a 

 single person in the audience said yes to it. How under the sun 

 do you expect an agricultural college to survive with such treat- 

 ment as that? And why in thunder did those people find fault 

 with that agricultural college when they didn't have one single 

 interest in it? If there are any of you people like that in the 

 State of Maine, keep it to yourself; don't say anything about 

 it. Don't find any fault with your college if it isn't doing as you 

 would like to have it do, if you haven't got a representative 

 there. I was glad to find that you had a young lady there from 

 our state, proved to be a relative of my wife and she didn't find 

 it out till this morning, and it was kind of funny that she should 

 drift from our state into the State of Maine to help you people 

 out. She is connected with the insect department and I presume 

 a good many of you know her. 



Now two or three years ago a young man came in and he said, 

 "Bro. Hixon, I want my boy to go to college for a short term in 

 horticulture, and I have tried and I can't do anything up here 

 with Amherst, I can't do anything at Rhode Island, I can't 

 do anything in Connecticut, not as I would like to do, nor New 

 Hampshire, and the only place left for me is the State of Maine, 

 and he wrote down to Orono. And he came down here and 

 went through the course in good shape, came back and went to 

 work for a greenhouse man near by and is doing first rate. 

 That all speaks a good word for your college over here. And 

 I am sorry to say that until the agricultural colleges meet the 

 farmers' boys half way and take off some of the educational 

 restrictions, that they are not going to make as many farmers 

 as they ought to make. I don't think a boy ought to graduate 

 from the high school before he can start out to study and to 



